The H-Bomb went off

Looking back now, it feels like the argument was inevitable, but I’m still surprised at its severity. I don’t enjoy conflict with people - I try not to get wound up about anything - but sometimes you have to make a stand. Sometimes you’re forced into a corner by a cold hard bitch and you have to engage just to avoid being bullied.



As soon as we began talking the loose comments piggybacked their way on to the end of an otherwise civilised sentence. The replies contained their own munitions, sometimes hidden in a pause, sometimes on full display, but they all hit their target. Once you’ve set off on this path it’s a slippery slope. Your momentum carries you forward to places you don’t especially want to go. Voices get raised, people are talking over others and neither wants to back down. The noise conveys no meaning but defiance. Any fragment of reserve that was in place at the start has been washed away by the rushing blood and all that remains in its place is instinct. Instinct from ancestors that lived in a wild time, when they had to fight to survive. Soon the insults weren’t camouflaged. They were clear. Rude. Excessive.

A very slippery slope.

My housemate, Psyc, was involved to. He remained calmer than me, despite receiving some heavier flak. I was amazed at how annoying the H-Bomb, my landlady, could be when she went off but I’m still a bit surprised and disappointed in myself for getting so wound up. That said I don’t regret anything I said and think that she deserved it. Some things need to be said.

After 15 minutes, with no progress made, the H-Bomb said,

“Im terminating this meeting, and will be serving eviction notices on you two”

Her fingers were pointing at Psyc and me.

Evicted.

Bring back Norris McWhirter

I went to Exeter on Saturday. I saw the Twin for a few hours then in the evening, in a different type of way, saw David Ford. I very much enjoyed the afternoon and evening. David Ford was/is a brilliant musician with a powerful, distinctive voice and a huge songwriting talent. He walked on and without a word began his song 'State of the Union' by playing and recording an instrument onto a loop which then continued playing as he sang and added in more and more instruments. It built up and up and up before he suddenly stopped the music and sang the last line unaccompanied. It was an amazing thing to witness live (not for the first time, YouTube has come to the rescue of my description).

Thinking about it afterwards I was in awe of his confidence at not mucking it up- it would really would have thrown a spanner in the works if he did as it would keep on playing over and over, and quickly become a whole set of spanners. This could easily have happened- during the gig he broke a string, the drum fell over, and his guitar strap came off - all of which would have caused a major problem with the recording bit.

Anyway, the gig was really good, but he is so intense, and the songs are so intensely downbeat that I found it quite draining. I'm not saying I think he shouldn't be intense, negative, and a bit miserable, but it really was an effort to get involved with each and every song as it consumed so much attention. After three or four songs I needed a few minutes relax and tell myself everything was going to be alright. In a 'normal' gig you can do this as you're stood up watching, dancing, or whatever and then you can go to the bar, have a joke with a friend or just throw some eye yarns round the room. In the venue he played, The Phoenix, everyone is sat down facing the stage and you're about 2 metres away from his guitar. It feels like it would be really rude to look away. You just have to sit there while he gives you both barrels and hope you dont black out.

Checking him out on YouTube I have seen a few really lighthearted, almost comedy covers ('My Heart Will Go On' and 'Stan' have lingered in my memory) either, or any other of which would have made some really good breaks in the intensity. He did cover Leonard Cohen, however, and he has a cover of The Smiths 'There Is A Light' on his myspace, so I guess he likes to cover dark songs as well as 'pop' ones, depending on his mood.

The support was Ruarri Joseph who was also highly enjoyable, and somewhat more optimistic in his words. I'm not sure if it was the lack of intensity, or something in the music, but I wasn't nearly as moved by his performance as David Ford's one. I'd quite like to be Ruarri Joseph's friend- but I didn't feel compelled to buy (Well, illegally download) his CD.

I also visited the narrowest street in the world (well nearly- see later)- which is only 64 cm wide at one end.

The wide (1.2m) end of the 2nd narrowest street in the world

However, after the narrowest street glory days of the 80's and 90's, the success was shook to its core in 2007 when a street in Germany successfully challenged Parliament and took its place in the Guinness Book of Records.



Have a look at the photo though. That's not a street! Its a gap between a building and a house- and a wooden house at that. Surely there must be some mistake. The standards of the Guinness World Records seem to have gone right off since Mcwhirter carked it. Theres no way he would have stood for this. Im seriously considering getting in there and sorting the world records team out before their own stock starts laughing at them.

I did wonder what criteria 'a street' actually has to have, but the Exeter one has at least got some doors to flats on it, so people live there. If the German ones allowed I may as well buy a bit of land, build two houses close together and then write to the council and say the 5 cm gap between them is a street. The Germans have missed the whole spirit of the narrowest street competition.

I think Exeter council should get some cement and reduce the gap slightly, just enough to get some of Mcwhirter's paduwans down with their ruler. I want to see Parliament Street back where it belongs as top of the narrow street pile.

HTML heavy; The Amazon

We head out into the night. I think to myself that my view would make a fantastic Imax cinematic experience, but I tell myself to stop thinking too much about what would be good and just take it in what is great, amazing, Amazonian, right now. The Rio Negro is 3 or 4 miles wide at this point, and stretches to the horizon out in front. I’m in a long motorised canoe with my fisherman, Sentana, zooming along in triangle formation with Big J and fisherman BigHat to my right and Calveson, alone, on point. Huge lines of lighting in the distance give an erie sense of scale of the river and the occasional flash closer to us lights up the boats, showing us for a split second exactly where the others are. The perspective from the front of the boat, with the warm wind in my face and lightening show maxing out the amount of info my eyes can process, really is fantastic. I feel more like a special forces soldier on a secret Amazonian mission than the description of ‘semi-nerdy scientist on a jolly’ which a friend had recently made with uncomfortable accuracy. My favourite moments are the 2 or 3 minutes where there is no electrical light at all and I can let my mind drift and try to consolidate the memory of the journey to the first discus fishing trip.

Sentana and BigHat: smoking during a refuel!

We were lucky to get here. We hired our boat and crew yesterday lunch time, loaded up the boat with supplies and equipment and arranged to set off that evening. We could see the local river beach situated on an island a short ferry trip away, so headed off there to while away the afternoon. We checked out the Fio Dental on display, swam in the river, and A German guy who had tagged along with us took some cool photos of us chilling in the shallows. Check out the bearded scientist (right)

On our return to the mainland we discovered our boat had sank. It had filled up with fuel, driven off the pontoon and something caused one of the hull planks to give way. We’re still not sure if it was some sort of explosion, or if drive had just hit something in the water. Either way, the boat keeled over, the three people on board jumped off, and the boat sank to the bottom. Luckily for capitano the bottom was only a few metres away, so he was able to get a tow to the shore and the next day pump out most of the water and save his livelihood. The photo shows the hole that caused the floating issue (photographed the day after during repairs).

To say the least, our bags were somewhat damp. My rucksack, that I had so meticulously packed had weighed 22Kg a the airport. Now I could barely move it, yet alone pick it up. All our sterile equipment; sponges, tubes, syringes, pipettes, and, for that matter, all our other equipment had taken a really good dunking. We nervously laughed as we checked whether or not we could save anything. We spread it all out to dry- it looked a bit like a pile of recovered things from an aeroplane disaster.

A day later we had salvaged what we could, borrowed some items from others and set off in boat number two. A few hours up river and the absolute wilderness made us rediscover the jokes we had had the evening before, most following the ‘what the fuck would we have done if the hull had given way here’ line of reasoning.

'Drown' seemed the most likely answer.

Boat #2 at camp 2


Calveson setting fishing nets - he was a lot better at it than me


A rainstorm at camp 1 (ill be amased if this works...)

The trip was a wonderful adventure, and while extremely tiring at times, it lived up to all of my expectations. We fished at night- an hour of so driving from our various beach camps and then paddling around the small tributaries until the day began to break. We returned to the hammocks and slept like dead men for 5 or 6 hours but then woke as the heat became too much. The days were relaxed in the extreme. We swam, set nets for piranha, watch the river dolphins cruise around the main channel. Later on we eat piranha, chilled out in our hammocks, took pictures and read. I tried a different Amazonian fruit every day for two weeks, including cashew fruit (as in the nut - you can see it in the picture), which i didn't even know existed. My favourite thing of the whole trip was the routines of doing the same things every day, things that ill probably never do again. I didn’t miss the city life at all- telephones, computers, tv, prepared food, rushing to do things- all of these were forgotten in an instant. I adored the time spent on the river, it was a simple existence, but one that my mind and body cheered for every day.

The Girls of the SMARTBuddy Mansion

Diary: I recently read some of my old posts and enjoyed remembering how I was thinking at the time, how perspectives have changed and so on, so I’m going to do another post for my own benefit in 6 months time...

The current crop from the mansion are:

Carrie from Christmas eve had, as she does, slipped from my mind until I just read my list of posts on my Blogger Dashboard. The day after I posted about her I was pointed in the direction of her FaceBook account by the C-Unit and messaged her, but have received nothing back. I wish I hadn’t been so clever in my message now. I can’t possibly send another. It’s probably for the best. She's called Carrie from Christmas Eve for a reason.

Girl A has moved to Australia. Oh well.

LEA is somewhat missing in action. We text a bit, but I think she’s more lonely than interested, but I’m not sure. She’s great, and we have ‘potential’, but I don’t think I’ll even see her until the spring or summer, by which time she will probably be married.

The Saturday night twin: The radio silence was unexpectedly broken soon after the last post and over the next week we sent the occasional flurry of texts which eventually set up a 'lunch date' for the coming Sunday. She had been to visit her mum in Cornwall and got off her train at Plym Station on her way home. Unfortunately for me that was the only getting off that the day was to see. I met her just outside the station. It was a little awkward. I drove us to the Barbican and since it was too early for lunch I suggested we go to the aquarium. This was probably a little selfish, but I saw it and immediately thought it would be a good place to walk around, have a chat, relax, and have something to look at during times when we had nothing to say. After thinking about it for another 20-30 seconds I thought it was a genius idea, but probably shouldn’t have told her so.

It was really good and I was enjoying it. They had a huge tank of UK fish like I saw snorkeling last year, and a tropical tank with loads of fish I saw in Sumatra. I think my favourite thing was a very large (football sized) octopus that I’ve never seen close up before, but who could probably have done with a bigger tank. The twin was easy to talk to, seemed quite relaxed and we had (well, I had) a good time. It was good to have her there without the other twin knocking about as unlike at New Year it was always really easy to tell who she was and who she wasn’t.

Then we went for lunch, which I was struggling with a bit on two fronts. I was mildly hungover and exceptionally full. I had been out the night before for 6 pints of Guinness, which is dinner in itself, but also had two normal dinners (I had dinner at home then got invited out by El Capitano with whom, after a few beers, I went for a curry with). Even after skipping brekkie in the morning I still felt like I’d just eaten my own liver, and a pub lunch with a pint didn’t really have its usual appeal. The food, thankfully, was good, and I managed to eat most of it in between feeling the early onset of obesity. The talk was fine. It was nice. It wasn’t amazingly good or bad, and continued over a cup of tea at my house and a lift back to the train station. I gave her a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek goodbye. I even broke out a wave as she walked off and looked back. That was it.

I guess my main thoughts are that it was fun, but not as much fun as meeting while drunk and kissing. I was being so measured and precise in everything I said- I’m sure she was as well. Pretty much everything I said got proof read before it came out to make sure there was nothing too strange in it. This, coupled with the fact that we didn’t really know each other led to lots of candy conversation about what we both did, what family we had, what we both did and what family we had. There was no blurting out of anything that would have given some real information about who we were, or who we were pretending to be (which would have been something at least). My sober brain was busy analysing what was being said, the behaviours we were displaying, the silences, the eye contact, but I didn’t really learn anything of note. Bring back getting ruined and drunk conversations any day. My previous few relationships have all evolved out of seeing someone out a few times, having a kiss or more over a series of drunken nights, from which we have, or have not, emerged a few months later as a couple.

I agree that that probably says more about me than her, but I’m not really thrilled or giddy, or whatever else I feel I should be about the prospect of two or three months of getting to know someone. It’s really not her- I wouldn’t want two or three months of sober conversations with Jessica Alba. I'm serious*. I want an instant hit. I want results. I just want to know. Maybe the Saturday night twin and I would be good together, but it’s going to take forever to even find out at this rate.
The main problem is that she lives in a different city. This means we’re trying to get to know each other without the benefit of being able to pop out for lunch, or a beer, or ten beers. This is no small thing. If it was the summer we could go camping or something. If one of us was really keen we could see each other on weeknights. If she lived up the street, we’d know in a few days if it’s going to be worth a go. They say long distance relationships are a struggle, but at least there is a relationship; this a long distance non relationship. I don’t know if it’s worth carrying on. So dont carry on, right?

The only other fact that has some bearing on the above is a holiday. Last week Barbie emails me to see if I want to go on a camping / surfing holiday to Biarittz at the end of May. I bite his electronic hand off as this sounds totally excellent. He buys flights, books the campsite and says, quite casually the next day,

‘Oh you know the Saturday night twin is going, don’t you?’

‘What? No. What?’

‘Yeah, shes going. Oh and LEA as well’

‘What? Nooo. Really?’

So now I'm going on holiday with the Saturday night twin in May. How awkward is that?! Ive got to explain to her how this happened without me knowing. How it really happened without me knowing, and not that I made it happen, which is how it looks. Plus now I’ve got this holiday hanging over my non-relationship like a smell that I can’t quite tell is good or bad. It could be good. Great even. It could be shit. It could be one of the smells that we keep in the fume cupboard that if you smell too much you die. It depends on what happens over the next few months. And LEA will be there to witness it all going off.

Good stuff Barbie.

*Well nearly.

January is rubbish

I heard on the news yesterday that it was officially the most depressing day of the year.

It says, "GPs say exercise and reading up on depression are ways to beat the blues".

WTF? Its dark and cold outside, you've got no money and you're feeling a bit depressed. Whats the one thing thats not going to help that situation? - Going out to buy, then sitting down and reading a book on depression. That really is depressing.

Thank fuck its out of the way!

The Carrot Goldfish

A long time ago, in a village far, far away me and my friend Gen played a trick on two of our friends. The trick wasn't great - more a bit of fun for a morning really - but due to a curious miss-identification it somehow managed to last for three years longer than it should have. Are you sitting comfortably?

Then ill begin:

Zil and The Caerphilly Mountain invited me, Gen and several others over to a house warming party in their newly purchased Cardiff abode. They had done some hard work renovating and decorating the place into a beautiful home and we gawped at the photos showing the carnage of just a few weeks before. The lounge, in particular, was decorated to perfection - all except one thing - a round, empty, fish tank that stood in the corner longing to be filled up with water and fish.

I don't recall the specifics of the party, but I know it was about 5 years ago, and so can, with some confidence, say that it involved a lot of beer, some non specific nibbles and a group of friends having 'a right laugh' as we called it back in them days.

In the morning, Zil and The Caerphilly Mountain had to get off to work, but were happy for Gen and me to make some brekkie before letting ourselves out. We did this, and upon noticing some rather splendidly fat carrots in the bottom of the fridge, Gen happened upon an idea: Lets make them some goldfish!

We spent the next hour converting the carrots into goldfish; we cut fins that plugged into the body, found some black peppercorns for eyes and carved a scale pattern onto both flanks. Gen's was amazing, mine even better. We filled up the tank and wedged its new inhabitants under some plants to stop them floating to the surface. The tank looked great and the light in the lid finished it off nicely, brightly illuminating the orange of the carrot goldfish.

I dont have any photos of the original, but google has offered me this effort, which is probably about similar to Gen's standard. Cute, but not realistic.

On the way home we texted Zil to say that 'We've bought you 2 housewarming presents and left them in the tank- you might want to get some food.' We giggled our way home, mock arguing over whose fish was the best.

Later that day Zil texted The Caerphilly Mountain saying she thought we had bought them some fish, so to get some fish food before going home. Zil herself was away with work for a couple of days so wouldn't be home to sort it out. The Caerphilly Mountain was also at work, but that evening bought some fish food on his way to the pub, where he proceeded to get absolutely battered. Staggering in, some hours later, he thought the new fish didn't look too well, and their lack of movement indicated to the inebriated Mountain that they were almost certainly dead. A removal of the plants, a pour down the toilet, and a flush, seemed to rapidly solve the problem, and The Mountain retired to his bed to restore the balance of power to the side of the sleep.

The morning saw a hungover Mountain reciting the previous evening events to Zil. The Mountain was sure the fish had died, probably because they were tropical fish in cold water, and that Gen and myself were a right couple of little tinkers for getting it wrong.

This news got transmitted to Gen a few days later by Zil via email. Gen forwarded it to me, and we both pondered what they were going on about. Could they really have mistaken our fakes for fish?..... Surely they're playing along?..... Yes, that's it, they were fucking with us. We decided to play along right back at them, replying, 'oh dear - we thought they were cold water fish, soooooo sorry :0('

The coming weeks saw The Mountain begin telling tales of his traumatic experience with the dead fish, really hamming it up, and relishing in the fact that I had bought tropical fish for a cold water tank. He found this fact particularly amusing because I was at the time studying to become a fish biologist. The Mountain had a good story and he was running with it. The emails 'Re: You Spakker' and texts began to come in.

Later that year Gen moved away to Hong Kong. For the good of the joke I was happy to take the abuse for a few years and I watched from the back rows as the story got passed around friends, elaborated on, and grew into something else. During the worse ribbing's I took solace in the knowledge that one day Gen would return with the truth. And return she did.

Zil couldn't believe it. The Caerphilly Mountain thought it was a joke. 'Noooooo. No way!' he said, the delight in my eyes slowly burning despair into his. Time had tricked him, consolidating a picture of two 'real' dead fish in his mind. It was a bitter pill to swallow but eventually Gen's sincerity convinced them and they accepted the truth - The Mountain had drunkenly mistaken our carrots to be dead tropical fish and given them a toilet bowl funeral.

Now I tell the story with a similar frequency that the Mountain used to, enjoying the fact that good things do come to those who wait.

(evil laugh) Ha Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha

Internet killed the live TV star

TV is dead to me.

I remember a time when i would be excited about a new TV programme that was on. I would look forward, really look forward to the next episode and enjoy the routine of never missing a certain show, and feeling some achievement in being there to watch a series develop over the weeks and months.

For the past few years this has stopped happening all together. When a new, highly rated series begins, ill sit and watch the pilot episode, then if I enjoy it ill go and download the rest from the Internet. If, as happens very occasionally I cant find what I want online ill just buy the DVD from EBay. The thought of sitting down for an hour a week for months on end seems stupid when you can watch as much or as little as you want to in one go, and never miss an episode. Better still you don't have to deal with the adverts. I remember when I first downloaded an episode of Lost and thought something had gone wrong as the file was only 41 minutes long and its on TV for an hour. But no, sure enough, when that episode was shown on TV it was bulked out with 19 minutes of complete shit. ER is a similar length, and on the latest series they obviously thought that 19 minutes of adverts wasnt enough, so extended it to 1 hour 5 minutes in the shedule, giving more dead time to advertise dead products.

Normally in the later stages of a series (or season) you get a 'Previously, on ...' update for a couple of minutes at the start of the show, which can also be skipped, as you've not had to wait around for a week forgetting what had just happened. In the 41 minute shows on for 1 hour 5 minutes, they have a break straight after the Previously.. section, just to confirm that it is absolutely unwatchable.

If you haven't ever got your favourite TV show on DVD or as media files I cant recommend it enough. I watch a lot of TV, I think TV is brilliant, but only when its on your own terms. Once you've seen and lived a series in a few weeks, theres no going back to the advert infested crock that is on Channel 4.

Ever.

In some unrelated Movie news: I watched The Kite Runner in the cinema this week (I wonder how long it will take before someone tries to introduce advert breaks at the cinema...) and thought it was fantastic. I was dragged along by my housemate and feared it may be a bit too arty for my primarily Transformers based pallet, but I was hugely surprised, moved, and immensely glad to have gone. The book has now got 'I want' written all over it.

Kissing the Saturday night Twin

New Years Eve.

I’m dressed in a Toast-inspired but not quite up to standard Robot costume made to satisfy the ‘first letter of your name’ fancy dress theme. (Me and Jesus, kicking it over a beer).

With one hour to go until 2008 becomes a reality we have broken the confines of the Clifton house party and ventured to a local bar. I’m really enjoying not having to queue at the bar, the medium to poor quality 'Ere mate, what are you, some sort of Robot' banter with the locals, and what can only be described as ‘flirting’ (go me!) with some of the party.

The Saturday night Twins are here, and I speak to both of them a few times (though I was never quite sure which was which). One of them seems up for it; tickling me, putting her arm round me, and hitting me with eye-yarns* from all over the bar. The only small problem is that there are two of them - they are twins after all - so I'm never really sure who I have, or haven't tickled back, or told that funny story to already. Several times over the next hour I feel uncomfortable talking to either or both of them as I’m not entirely sure where, or with which one, I stand anywhere with.

It very slowly dawns on me that they’re wearing different outfits, and it becomes easier (well very simple, I suppose, writing this now) to tell them apart, and it seems T2 is the interested twin (My least favourite from my original encounter) but I don't give fact this much thought. The next thing I realise is its 2008, and I’m at the bar, robot helmet removed, but outfit otherwise intact, kissing T2. I found out later that before we’d even finished, a picture message of the encounter was making its way from Barbie's phone to JB’s - a friend on holiday in New Zealand – which is in no other related to the story, but a surreal thought I thought worthy of a mention.

I enjoy myself for the rest of the evening, but get slightly concerned by some of the things T2 is coming out with. By 3 am, everyone is back at the house, the Singstar comp has been won and lost, and everyone is dropping off to sleep (including T2). I'd be quite up for sleeping with T2, but not in a body filled sleepover room at either this, or Barbies flat. I decide its time to bail, so make my goodbyes and walk back to Barbie’s flat wearing my robot legs (the rest was MIA) and carrying a borrowed dining chair. Unfortunately I was neither drunk, nor sober enough to make another random diary video at this point, as it probably would have been another beauty.

New Year’s morning brings a hangover, 4 cups of tea, a TV re-run of the year-ending Take That concert (described brilliantly here), and the steady emergence of friends from their first 2008 slumber. Most are sick (literally- one in the kitchen sink when the bathroom was occupied), some are bright eyed (but not many), and one is bushy tailed (the cat). An initial text exchange with T2 (when I gave out three kisses (‘xxx’) at the end of my message and immediately felt like a right little floozy) has, over the past few days, quickly developed into complete radio silence.

Nevertheless, best start to the year in years!

*Eye Yarns. A phrase from Big J in Brazil: ‘Chatting up’ is a Spinning a Yarn. ‘Giving the eye to’ is an Eye Yarn

Carrie from Christmas Eve

Prologue: At the 1996 6th form party Carrie comes and sits on my lap, we talk and I’m reasonably sure I was too drunk to lay down any tangible memory of what unfolded next. This was back in the day when a party snog came more readily than a serious conversation - a trend which has been depressingly reversed in more recent times.

Christmas Eves:

Carrie is one of those people I only ever see on Christmas Eve. She’s there down the local in amongst the frequent knowing nods and occasional awkward conversation that the Christmas cheer - or maybe just the Stella - seems to make slightly more enjoyable than difficult. I’m not sure exactly when we were Christmas Eve reunited after the teenage encounter, but know for certain that ive spoken to her exclusively on Christmas eves for the past 5 years, and possibly a couple more previous to that. Given this fact, I think our relationship is going well. We’ve progressed through the, ‘Hey hows it going’ ...If you asked me now I’m not sure I really know who you are... of the awkward first conversation, through the years of familiar smiles and, ‘Oh Hiya – I only ever really see you on Christmas Eve!’ On to the, ‘See you next year’ and, a year later, ‘Oh Hi, hows it going?’

I've learnt she’s a dentist, and now seems to work for a few months and then goes travelling for the rest of the year. She does both surfing and snowboarding is virtually always the coolest person I meet up the pub on Christmas Eve. In short; I fancy her, but only once a year.

In the last two years we’ve gone on to another pub after the first one like we’ve known each other for years (we have, in a way) and most significantly this year (at least in my head), we did this alone.

I can’t say for her, of course, but in my head at least it was a case of get into another pub, have a beer or two and get a Christmas kiss in. The trouble was this year we couldn’t find a bastard pub that would let us in. After four pub refusals for a variety of not very Christmassy reasons, we made it to the Golden Lion where her brother was inside enjoying a lock in. The doorman was not in the slightest bit interested in a bit of Christmas banter and our available two options both seemed to involve fucking right off. Carrie was staying at her brothers in Downend – quite a hike away – so I found it strange that her brother was more worried about loosing his place in the lock in than helping his sister out. On any other night I would have offered her to stay at my parents and I could have given her a lift in the morning, but this was, after all Christmas Eve, so it didn’t really seem like an option. I couldn’t read whether Carrie wanted me to walk her home (I would have gladly) or wait with her until the pub chucked out, or just snog her face off in the car park*. After probably not enough thought I stood up to the doorman and told him he should let Carrie in as she was a girl on her own and needed to be safe inside with her brother. He agreed to this, which left me just a few seconds - with her brother and the doorman both staring me down - to make my move. Obviously I bailed, and just went for the kiss on the cheek, the ‘Happy Christmas’ and the hug (trying to leave it that micro second longer than I would of if I didn’t care).

Ten seconds later and I’m walking away with no phone number, no email or Facebook-stalking** details (I don’t even know her surname) and 364 days to think about what could have been.

* Two points-
1. This was more like my dream than a realistic option, but hey, this is my Blog.
2. Yes, I just said ‘snog her face off.’

** I don’t like the word stalk, but it is stalking; and don’t pretend you don’t do it. It may as well be called Stalkbook

Back without a bang

Im back. Hooray!
The Amazon was an amazing place, and I had a wonderful time. Obviously there are a lot of funny and interesting posts in the making, but Ive not got the time to do them justice right now.

That said, here is a photo of our boat:


..and a sunset:


...and an Arowana:


....and a slain beast:



Which may or may not get explained in the coming weeks.

Happy New Year!